The King’s Speech July 16, 2026July 15, 2026 Trump is expected to lay the predicate tonight for declaring a national emergency in the weeks leading up to the mid-terms, whereby to snatch electoral victory from what now seems ever more likely to be the jaws of resounding defeat. He won’t be talking about the brilliant success of his war in Iran (and how he plans to end it) . . . or about rising prices and a likely Fed rate hike before the election. He won’t be talking about the ICE murders or his total rejection of Ronald Reagan’s view of what makes America great. He won’t be talking about climate change (for those of us enjoying a “real feel” of 100° today, imagine it ten or twenty degrees hotter as he shits down wind farms in favor of fossil fuel combustion) or the need to shut rural hospitals and cut off food assistance to hungry children, veterans, elderly, and the disabled in order to fund further tax cuts for billionaires. He won’t be talking about the billions he’s made since re-taking office or the Epstein files he campaigned on releasing. Apparently, he’ll be talking about how the 2020 election was stolen. (Oddly, on his watch as president.) And the need to assure it not be stolen again. When he won in 2016, while a Democrat was in the White House presiding over things, there was no foreign interference. (Russia? are you listening?) And when he won in 2024 (again, while a Democrat was in the White House pulling the strings), the election was legitimate. But in 2020? All Georgia needed to do was find him 11,780 votes! All he asked Mike Pence to do was to throw out the election results! All he asked his followers to do, some of whom, he knew, were armed, was to march to the Capitol and fight like hell “or we won’t have a country.” All he did — for hours — while they beat police and ransacked the Capitol for the first time since 1812, was watch on TV and rerun the most violent parts. His aim tonight I’m told will be, as I say, to lay the predicate — plant the seed — to get the conspiracy theorists foaming. To tell his MAGAns that honoring the will of the people — who clearly love what he’s doing! don’t we? — can only be achieved by changing the way we conduct elections. It’s crazy. More than 60 judges (62 out of 63, if memory serves, the lone exception being a technical footnote) — many of them Trump appointees — threw out all his claims of 2020 election fraud as unfounded. And yet he knows he won “by a landslide,” refuses to hire anyone who disputes his 2020 win, and is fast turning our precious, cherished democracy into a fascist kleptocracy. He will fail — as Orban did in Hungary, where the opposition landslide was just “too big to rig.” But it’s profoundly dangerous; and will only fail if we all lean in more heavily than we ever have before. I’m an investor in Just Ice Tea (justice tea — get it?) the successor to Honest Tea (get it?) — both of which sport little messages on the inside of the bottle caps. The one I’m looking at now, from an ice-cold bottle of Moroccan Mint, is a quote from Theodore Roosevelt: “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” Stay cool.
I Have No Excuse . . . July 15, 2026July 15, 2026 . . . for being nearly 11 days late with these first two, but the joy of having no advertisers or editor is that I can be as laggardly as I want. Like our friends (surely you have some) who send their holiday missives in February. And so . . . 1. Trae Crowder found it impossible to enjoy July 4th. Here’s why in under 3 R-rated minutes. 2. Trump will try to steal the mid-terms. Here’s how. Switching gears: YOUR MONEY I think oil prices — and thus inflation — and thus interest rates — will likely rise as Trump bumbles . . . and that the stock market will likely fall. (Needless to say, I’ve been wrong before.) Over the long run, the kinds of crazy speculations I’ve suggested should not be affected. ParkerVision either will or will not eventually see justice done — regardless. Anixa’s drugs either will or will not prove effective — regardless. Oportun either will or will not reach the kind of $3/share earnings per share over the next few years that would justify a much higher price — regardless. And so on. (It’s a long list. Even Borealis and WheelTug are still alive!) Whatever the broader market does, one or more of our speculations could jump 5-fold or 10-fold if we’re lucky. By contrast, it’s hard to picture Tesla, selling at 350X earnings and a $1.5 trillion valuation, having the same kind of upside. It is not the only company that knows how to make good automobiles and won’ be the only company competing to sell humanoid robots. And may not forever have a protector in the White House. CHRB Some of us bought it three years ago at $13.50 a share with the promise of about $6 in dividend payments, which we have received, and a $25 redemption at the end of next month. It’s so thinly traded by now that you can’t buy it (I tried yesterday). I’m not selling it, either. A friend who spoke with their investment relations person recently believes we will soon be offered our choice of redemption — $25 — or an extension of the deal. In my tax-deferred IRA, if we do in fact get this choice, I’ll likely take the money and run. In my taxable account, I may opt to continue to receive my $2.125 a year. For one thing, 8.5% isn’t a bad return. For another, extending my holding period means deferring taxes on the gain. Maybe my friend was misinformed and disaster looms; but I have the happy gene, as you know, so am thinking this could work out.
Well, He Went Out Big July 14, 2026July 14, 2026 And maybe that’s what Lindsey Graham wanted most of all — to be paid attention to. To be at the center of things. Not all the attention has been kind. A lot of it has been humorous. Some of it has been blunt. My friend Keith Boykin had this to say: “I’m not gunna do it,” he begins. “I’m not gunna stand here and pretend that Senator Lindsey Graham was a great and honorable man just because he’s dead — because he wasn’t. Lindsey Graham was a miserable evil warmonger with no principles.” It’s about as powerful a two-and-a-half minutes as you’re likely to see — worth your time. Some has even been musical. My friend Tym sent a recording of Lady Bug Death Drop. Younger readers may recognize the artist’s voice; I did not. I offer it not because I’m entirely comfortable with the mean-spiritedness of its lyrics — I am not — but because if younger readers do recognize the artist’s voice, they’ve been fooled. It turns out Tym did it all with AI. In a couple of minutes. Being of a certain age, I find that astounding. He simply prompted Gemini AI: I want to make a fun, joyful, and celebratory dark humor anthem about Lindsey Graham’s death on Suno. It should be in 90s house style, with ding ding the witch is dead vibes, crystal waters Sylvester inspired. Please draft a prompt for Suno for all the necessary fields. The title should be Lady Bug Death Drop with relevant lyrics. Gemini did; Suno (an AI that makes music) did the rest. If you were a Lindsey Graham fan, you can ask Gemini to write “RIP, American Hero” — perhaps with gospel and patriotic vibes, Kid Rock and Ted Nugent inspired. Suno will do the rest. Some of it has been appropriately respectful. Lindsey Graham R.I.P. – Robert Reich.
Take Heart! July 12, 2026 OPRT If you bought shares with money you can truly afford to lose at the various times I’ve suggested it, you’re now anywhere from a small gain to more than a double. Yesterday’s press release struck me as a bit opaque — I need examples to understand things — but an astute OPRT observer tells me it’s good news, the first of several strategic moves he hopes to see the company make to return its valuation — a quadruple from here — it attained five years ago before the previous management took it off course. BOROWITZ ON COMMUNISM His wonderful list of what is and is not communist. YOUR HEALTH You don’t have to be pre-diabetic to be concerned. One minute. REICH ON COMPETENCE But never fear (well, fear, and take action and contribute, but take heart!). We will prevail! To which — if accusers unearthed by the Epstein files and the judge who presided over the E. Jean Carroll case are to be believed — you could add “rapist.” Where ARE all the missing Epstein files — with minimal redactions — required by the law Congress passed all but one vote shy of unanimously? Anyone who deplores child sex trafficking deserves to know.
RNGE! Crypto! ICE! Yikes! July 10, 2026July 9, 2026 RNGE . . . . . . just announced hiring a Harvard quarterback who went on to get an MD and an MBA — which I like for two reasons. First, combined with his extraordinary business experience, it sure seems as though he could help RNGE do some really great, environmentally friendly, profitable things. Second, the fact that someone of his caliber would sign on with our little company strikes me as quite an endorsement. The stock jumped another 16% to 88 cents yesterday, up from the 15 cents we paid. I may sell a little in a tax-deferred account because I have so much of it — at this price it’s become my largest holding — but I’m betting (with money I can truly afford to lose) that the stock will be a lot higher in two or three years. CRYPTO If you were on Indivisible‘s Thursday call, you got a great education in crypto from Ben McKenzie, author of Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud. If you missed it, not to worry — the podcast replay will be posted sometime today. (Executive summary: The biggest Ponzi scheme in hostory. If you own some: sell. Also: how Trump made $1.4 billion on it while those he made it from lost almost everything. Plus: a bill your senators need to vote against.) ICE KILLS AGAIN This time, a 52-year-old father of three with no criminal record who had spent decades building homes in the Houston area, on his way to work. Clearly, “the worst of the worst.” And don’t you go vilifying the leaders of ICE for this, either, because, as the Washington Post recounts . . . THEY KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE . . . What had David Streever, a former journalist now working in the tech industry, done to deserve a home visit, repeated calls and voicemails, Homeland Security showing up at his hotel and the apparent tracking of his movements? He had sent one email — five months earlier. He had written to then-acting ICE director Todd Lyons criticizing the agency’s immigration enforcement operations after the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti during anti-ICE protests in Minneapolis. In the email, he condemned Lyons’s defense of the shooting and compared him to the head of the Nazi security services. “You are a monstrous human being,” Streever wrote, “and will go down in history as America’s Reinhard Heydrich, the butcher.” Streever predicted that Lyons’s defense of an “obvious execution” would cause even Trump to turn on him, and that Lyons’s conscience would torment him for the rest of his life. “You will never know peace,” he wrote. “You will seek to lose yourself, to escape the burden of knowing the truth about yourself.” . . . In Trump’s America, as in Putin’s Russia or Kim’s North Korea, it’s risky to speak truth to power. All signs are that, if Trump is able to retain his lock on all three branches of government, it will get riskier still. Join Indivisible! Support the opposition!
Pope Leo Wishes Us A Happy Birthday July 9, 2026July 8, 2026 Yesterday: Bill Clinton on Trump’s Mt. Rushmore Address. Today: Pope Leo on the 250th anniversary of our founding. . . . Also among the principles that have guided the development of this country is the God-given dignity of every human life, each person being endowed with an inherent worth that calls for reverence, protection and care. In this spirit, a full understanding of this dignity leads to recognizing the importance of safeguarding human life from its beginning at conception until natural death, and of building a society in which the vulnerable, the suffering and the forgotten are always met with compassion, solidarity and love. Defending human life also includes welcoming, protecting and assisting immigrants, whose hopes, sacrifices and contribution have formed part of the history of this country from its very beginning. In every generation, those who have arrived seeking freedom, opportunity and a place to belong have helped to shape the nation’s character. To receive them with compassion and generosity is not only an act of charity, but also a recognition of the dignity that belongs to every human person. . . . May this milestone renew the shared commitment to the promise of freedom, justice, opportunity and democracy. May Americans honor the courage and vision of those who came before them by strengthening their communities, respecting their differences and working together toward a more perfect union. EPSTEIN Any news? Are those Republicans rightly concerned about Graham Platner’s behavior toward adult women and his problematic choice of tattoos (when young and drunk) not even more concerned with Trump’s 38,000 mentions in the redacted Epstein files thus far released? With his having been adjudicated a rapist and, separately, accused of raping a 13-year-old? With his having had dinner (when sober and in his seventies) with white nationalist Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes? Platner, had he been elected, would have been one-hundredth of one-half of one-third of the government. Trump is a full third and largely controls the other two. It does not bode well for the rest of us that, according to one close observer, everything he touches dies. BONUS Rahm’s 23-state solution.
Trump: Up Three Billion; Investors: Down Seven July 8, 2026July 8, 2026 LEAVING MAGA Slowly but surely . . . (60 seconds). ROBERT DE NIRO Wants his country back (40 seconds). JAMES TALARICO Responds to Trump’s attack (80 seconds). FORBES Meet The Investors Who Lost Billions Buying Trump Stocks And Crypto . . . From 2021 to 2025, five Trump-family ventures reached public investors: Trump Media, World Liberty Financial, Trump’s memecoin, Melania Trump’s memecoin and American Bitcoin. Now, they are all hitting the messy stage. Trump Media shares are down 89% from their peak. World Liberty tokens have fallen 82%. The president’s memecoin is off 98%. Melania’s version has dropped 99%. Shares of American Bitcoin are down 95%. The Trumps, after cashing out $1.9 billion, are still up $3.1 billion overall, according to Forbes calculations. Their supporters are down an estimated $7 billion. . . . RNGE Up another dime yesterday. Isn’t this fun? IMPORTANT President Clinton on Trump’s Mt. Rushmore Address. Nineteen ever-so-thoughtful minutes. So much so, I increased the font. EPSTEIN Any news?
Communism: Carl Responds! July 7, 2026July 8, 2026 Trump’s current line, which Carl dutifully repeats, is that Democrats are communists. (Also: deranged radical lunatics.) Yesterday, I asked whether Carl even knows what a communist is. He began his response by quoting a Republican congresswoman, Nicole Malliotakis, who says “Socialism is communism light — the first step to communism.” And yet when you think about it, socialism is actually what prevents communism. Cuba, Russia, China — they did not gradually morph from ever-increasing socialism to communism — they exploded via revolution from extreme wealth inequality. Was czarist Russia socialist? Anything but. Was pre-revolutionary China socialist? No — and it banned the communist party. Was pre-revolutionary Cuba socialist? Check your AI. Mine opines: Wealth inequality in Batista’s Cuba was extreme — among the worst in the Western Hemisphere — and one of the core drivers of the Cuban Revolution. The country had a small, ultra‑rich elite concentrated in Havana and a vast rural population living in deep poverty. Extreme wealth inequality, not socialism, is what precedes communist revolutions — or else, in the alternative, precedes “populist” takeovers like Hitler’s or Mussolini’s or Trump’s. (I know it irks to keep repeating it, but for years Trump – no avid reader – kept My New Order, a book of Hitler’s speeches, by his bedside. I have a copy. He needed only to read the foreword and the introduction, by western journalists, to understand how Hitler was elected . . . and, years later, to follow the same playbook himself. Twice.) It’s not socialism that precedes communism or fascism; it’s extreme inequality — where one guy’s worth a trillion dollars while those who want to raise the $7.25 minimum wage are called communists. Where the ruler enriches his family by billions his first year back in office and guts the Internal Revenue Service of the staff needed to collect taxes due from the billionaires and large corporations whose tax rates he’s cut. Socialism, by preventing such grotesque inequality, prevents communism. And socialism, it’s always worth noting, is a matter of degree. The U.S., with its publicly owned and run roads and schools and police and fire departments, its progressive income tax and social safety net, is socialist. The rest of the developed world goes further, especially when it comes to health care, but it’s only, as I say, a matter of degree. MAGA Americans want Social Security and Medicare and affordable health care (be patient: after ten years of diligent thinking, Trump has a concept of a plan). They want public roads, public parks, unemployment insurance and clean water. They just hate the elites and see the press as “the enemy of the people” because Trump has persuaded them it’s the elites and the press — and the radical deranged lunatic communist Democrats like Clinton, Obama, and Biden — who are to blame for their difficulty making ends meet. When in fact the blame for that, if one looks at it objectively, falls mostly on Trump and the Republican elites. (If you missed it yesterday: Things Republicans gave us and things they’ve opposed — 90 angry seconds.) Carl does go on to cut and paste (from someplace) the communist agenda: COMMUNIST AGENDA! Abolition of private property in land, diverting all rents to public use A heavy progressive income tax to flatten wealth distribution. Abolition of all rights of inheritance to stop generational wealth accumulation. Confiscation of property belonging to emigrants and political rebels. Centralization of credit and banking into a single national bank with an absolute state monopoly. Centralization of all communication and transport infrastructure into state hands. Expansion of state-owned factories, instruments of production, and central planning for agriculture. Equal liability of all to work, including the establishment of industrial armies. Combination of agriculture and manufacturing to gradually blur the distinction between town and country. Free public education for all children and the elimination of traditional child factory labor. OK. Does he think Democrats want to abolish private property? Does he think the much more steeply progressive income tax rates, and estate tax rates, under Eisenhower and Nixon (among others) were communist? Does he think the Democratic platform includes abolishing inheritance or dissolving all private banks or state takeover of all communication and transport? If he doesn’t think these things — and how can he? — then by cutting and pasting that, he’s proving that Trump is WRONG to be calling Democrats a communist threat, and that he, too, is wrong for slinging the epithet. I’ll admit that the last line on that communist agenda is one I like — “free public education for all children and the elimination of traditional child factory labor.” But doesn’t Carl? Don’t MAGA Republicans? Communism is nice in theory but a disaster in reality, as it defies human nature and always leads to tyranny. I am for well-regulated capitalism. Speaking of which: RNGE Suggested here at 15 cents, the stock traded as high as 75 cents yesterday on news that Range Impact and C2 Ventures Launch AI Infrastructure Platform on 9,000-Acre West Virginia Energy Corridor . . . before falling back to close at 65 cents. I’m holding all mine. John L——: “I have to ask if Carl’s last name is ‘L——.’ Because that would be my hateful old man whom I haven’t spoken to in over 16 years. Every time I see one of your posts about Carl, I start wondering.” → No, it’s a different Carl. Under Trump’s spell, there are many. THE WORLD CUP As you know, we got knocked out by Belgium. STLB: “Someone should point out to Trump that the USA Soccer player he intervened with FIFA to let play against Belgium is a birthright citizen whose mother was so pregnant that a stewardess refused to let board a plane home.” → Ironic, no? Everything Trump Touches Dies. (See also: the Knicks’ 13-game winning streak.) PLATNER Must drop out. EPSTEIN Any news?
Communists? Really? Does He Even Know What A Communist Is? July 6, 2026July 6, 2026 COMMUNISTS Now Trump has his followers calling Democrats “communists.” Carl has been calling me a communist for quite some time. I’ve asked him repeatedly to tell me what he thinks communism is, and he never answers. Either he doesn’t know, or he realizes that there’s a world of difference between Democratic socialism — i.e., Europe, basically . . . . . . and communism — i.e., North Korea. The most prominent features of Democratic socialism are things like universal health care, public education, and generous vacation time. Among the most prominent features of communism are that the state owns all the “means of production,” like the factories and the farms; that the leader is an autocrat who prohibits dissent; and that the only people who live comfortably are the corrupt officials who carry out the decrees of the autocrat, who lives unbelievably well because he is even more corrupt. The kind of ruler Trump admires and seems increasingly to emulate. If Carl — who sends me two or three unhinged, hateful emails each day — does ever offer his definition of communism, I will faithfully reprint it. REPUBLICANS Things Republicans gave us (like recessions) — and things they opposed (like Medicare and the 40-hour work week) (90 seconds). It really puts meat on the bones of D = Drive ; R = Reverse.
RNC Chair on Epstein July 5, 2026July 6, 2026 Hope you had a great Fourth. DEM250.COM So far, Andrew Yang has the most votes, followed by Abe Lincoln, Heather Cox Richardson and Harry Truman (““When even one American – who has done nothing wrong — is forced by fear to shut his mind and close his mouth — then all Americans are in peril.”). Jimmy Carter comes next (“The only title higher and more powerful than president is the title of citizen.”) Then former lifelong Republican FBI Director James Comey (“A president who sees the rule of law as an obstacle to be circumvented—rather than a principle to be upheld—is a threat to the very democracy he was elected to lead.”) I love all those, but there are so many more. John McCain! Elizabeth Warren! AOC! Ronald Reagan! George H.W. Bush: “America is never wholly herself unless she is engaged in high moral principle. We as a people have such a purpose today. It is to make kinder the face of the nation and gentler the face of the world.” Gerald Ford: “Our constitution works; our great republic is a government of laws and not of men. Here, the people rule.” Dan Rather: “I have covered wars, assassinations, and political upheavals. But I have never seen a threat to democracy as clear and present as the one we face today. History will judge how we respond.” Jake Sullivan! James Talarico! Jeb Bush: “We need to be vigilant against the forces of authoritarianism. America’s democracy is worth defending—and that means standing up even against members of your own party when they go wrong.” And preposterously, as it comes from the current chair of the Republican National Committee, who might take a cue from Jeb Bush (above): “The moment we treat the rule of law as optional, we’ve already lost what makes America great.” Lots more. Enjoy. SUMMER READING Rule of Lies: My Wild Ride Through Chaos, Corruption, and Murder in Putin’s Russia — the amazing autobiography of Jamison Firestone, read (if you choose the Audible version) by the author. A Dutiful Boy: A Memoir of a Gay Muslim’s Journey to Acceptance — so beautifully written, by a Brit named Mohsin Zaidi. SUING HEGSETH Last month my friend James Dale sued the Department of Defense. As reported by the Associated Press, The Washington Post, and The New York Times: . . . Mr. Hegseth, who has made a campaign against diversity, equity and inclusion policies the hallmark of his tenure as defense secretary, said that Scouting America was banning transgender people from openly participating in the group. But Scouting America said it had not changed its policies on transgender members. “Both accounts cannot be true, and the stakes are of profound public importance,” the complaint, filed by activist James Dale, said. Mr. Dale said in an interview that he had tried for months to get the Pentagon to show him the agreement, and that the department had not done so. Mr. Dale was the plaintiff in a 2000 Supreme Court case in which the court ruled, 5 to 4, that the Boy Scouts of America was exempt from a state law prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation. The organization changed its name to Scouting America in 2024. . . . EPSTEIN! MAGA Republicans are okay with pedophilia when their leader — who has enriched himself by billions in the past year — tells them it’s all a witch hunt. Trump continues to flout the law Congress passed one vote shy of unanimously — and RNC chair Joe Gruter, quoted in bold face above, says . . . nothing.